


On the edge of the sea

by bloodandcream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Merman Castiel, Stillbirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 23:53:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4078720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/pseuds/bloodandcream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Though the sun was dipping down low and Meg needed the light to climb back up the steep trail of the cliff, she stretched along the rock and rested her head on the edge where Castiel lay his as he let his lower half soak in the waters. Face to face they lay in the dimming day while the clouds were fringed in pink, touching lips and fingers to each other. The prince and princess of the domain of their own making on the edge of the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the edge of the sea

-

There was an old crone who lived alone on an island in the sea.

Her body withered as her hair grayed and her bones grew gnarled. She couldn’t leave for her curled hands wouldn’t work an oar. Without the bounty of the sea or even her chickens, her old body stooped and her stomach hollowed as her toothless gums gnashed roots and shriveled vegetables.

She counted the cycles that he had not returned to her as the seasons passed. Her eyes remained fixed on the horizon and the edge of the shore, even as they filmed and the world grew blurry. She watched still, keeping her vigil for a ripple on the waters. The silence of the bell by the shore was a heavy thing. 

As the earth hardened with frost and the first snows fell since he had been lost to her, she wandered the shore. Down to the rocks where she sat with the ice cold water lapping at her toes. Feebly she clutched and held on to the string of pearls looped thrice around her neck, paper crepe skin brushing the smooth curves of pearls that had worn from so many years of her touch. It was her most precious possession. The only thing left that she had to remind herself.

All tides will ebb and pull away from the shore. All suns will set over glimmering water. 

The crone waited on the edge of the sea in the dwindling twilight as the day yielded to night. She waited for the sea to come and claim her old bones. For she knew the waves would take her home.

-

The small house that perched on the small island was unkind to Meg in her old age sometimes. She was unable to repair that clapboard that rotted and fell away. Unable to climb to the roof and cover the holes that weather made. Unable to replace the stairs that slanted and splintered away.

Yet she staid, for the bell still tolled from the rocky shore down by the sea.

In her youth she had salvaged an old iron bell from the mainland and affixed it to a pole with a rope so that Castiel could ring it when he came and she would know to hurry down to the shore. Her soft feet and slender legs used to carry her down to clamber over the rocks with vigor when she was a young maiden. But now her shriveled muscles and bowed shoulders were slow to descend.

From the grassy slope that led down to the rocks, she could see him there. His skin as pale as the foam capping the waves. His tail as dark as the wet rocks. Yet for the blackness of his scales, they shone in the sun light as a rainbow does after a storm. Glimmering and beautiful.

Carefully, half bent to steady herself with her hands as she slipped and shuffled over the rocks at the edge of the sea, the old crone made her slow way down to the waves to greet him. His skin was as tight and his muscles as taut as years ago although there were more scars that marred him now from the other predators in the sea. She wondered how long he would live. Merkind had a different sense of time in the deep, Meg had come to learn.

Settling her achy old body on a flat rock, Castiel was already waiting there for her with his tail swishing in the waters and his body propped on his arms. He leaned up for a kiss, his wet lips plump over her dried withered skin. His smile was bright and his eyes were sharp, squinting in the daylight.

“You look shaky today Meg.”

“These old bones rattle around too much anymore.”

“I worry about you falling on the rocks.”

“I do not. My eyes may not be as keen and my feet may not be as steady, but I could never stay away. Do not worry for me.”

She could not lay on the rocks anymore, not even when he made beds of seaweed and moss for her, for her weary body would refuse to rise again. Instead, her merman curled up around her and circled her body with his. Still cold from the waters, drying in the air, he remained by her side as they soaked in the sun and listened to the waves crash on the rocks like their heartbeats pounding in their chests for each other.

-

There was a rhythmic cadence to her life on the island when Meg settled in on the slice of land that sat lonely in the sea. There were chickens to feed and gardens to tend, work around the house to upkeep, crafts to polish. Castiel brought her treasures from the deep when he found the sunken ruins of humans unfortunate enough to be claimed by the sea. Mostly they were broken and rotted things. Nonetheless there were things of value to be found. 

Meg crafted even with the broken things he brought, of metal and china and stone. She made what she could of these oddities, for they were her barter when she traveled to the mainland. The small row boat that Castiel had brought her to the island on was kept in good order, and though she were perfectly capable of taking herself to land he liked to tow her, his head and tail bobbing in the water ahead of her boat as he sped along. Truth be told, Meg liked to watch him. She did not let him travel the inlet that let to the harbor for there was too much chance humans would see him. Once they were at the shore line Meg took up oars and sent him away. 

There were things she needed, or perhaps only wanted, that she could not reproduce on her island. With what treasure Castiel found which they were willing to trade, she went to town for grains and cloths and tools. Her brother still lived in town as well, with his wife and his three children who were all fat and happy. Though Meg had never told Tom where she went or why, he had grown in to a wise man like their father had been. He accepted her happiness and acquiesced easily to her free will, glad to see her when she visited. 

Despite her brother’s continued warmth towards her, Meg heard the others whisper, hissing _witch_ behind her back. She kept her head high. _Witch_ they said, for she was a woman without a man who lived alone on an island in the sea which everyone feared was haunted. What could an unfettered woman want with the spirits of the dead. Meg let them have their gossip, paying no heed to wagging tongues. 

She was content with her meager trade, with the products of her toil in the gardens. Castiel brought fish from the sea to her. Though she appreciated what he provided, it was his company and the unfettered happiness they had together basking under the sun on their own slice of shore that was why Meg staid. Her life here was simple, quiet, but good. 

She had never lain with another but Castiel, nor did she ever want to. Much of their time together was spent curled around one another on the flat rocks by the sea where he could dip his tail in to splash water up when he dried, or lower half his body into the water as he rested his head upon the rocks and listened to her reading. They wove garlands for each other of shells and stone. Castiel still brought her pearls to add to the strings around her neck. 

His body was a familiar thing to her which she knew intimately. As was hers to him. The distance between their worlds bridged only by the shoreline was eased with the contact they had between their bodies. Meg langoured under the attention of his hands, preened under the praise of his tongue, worshipped him in every way she had learned. His weight atop her was a comfort, his sex within her was a heat, the roll of their bodies together like waves was as wild and varied as the sea. Sometimes cresting high and furious, sometimes steady and true. Sometimes they lay together on their sides with Castiel’s chest to her back and his arms around her waist, moving gently within her like windblown ripples on the surface of placid waters. 

Though the sea were vast and the depths mysterious, the waters always changing, there is a constancy in it as there was in their love. 

-

Meg lay in the thick wild grass underneath the sky as a chicken clucked it’s way past her. The wildflowers were fragrant in early spring and the ground was soft with recent rains. Blinking into the blue expanse of sky, she rest her hand on her belly and felt for the life growing within. Though she had her suspicions after missing several blood cycles, it was not until her belly began to swell that she knew for certain. 

When she had asked Castiel if it were possible to conceive with him, he had replied that he was uncertain. For merkind had to have originated somewhere did they not. There were legends among his kind of the spirit of the sea coupling with the spirit of the land, bearing a creature with the strengths of both their kind. The children of the sea and the land were meant to be given the world, to roam above or below as they saw fit. But the spirit of sea was lonely in the depths and sealed her children’s tails together so they could only remain in the waters with her. Surely then two creatures such as them would bear more children, as the ancestors of his legend could.

Meg was hopeful. Though Castiel came to the edge of the sea on her little island and spent days with her, it was only in the liminal space on the rocks between the land and the water that they held domain. She grew lonely with only the chickens and the earth worms to keep her company when Castiel hunted in the depths to bring her food and treasures. 

A life of both their creation was a blessing, if it were to survive. Meg was too fearful of the poisoned tongues and barbed glances in town to dare ask questions there. She bore the life within her in silence, and in the company of Castiel when he dragged himself up on the rocks to bring her food and his company, his touch, his love.

As the summer swelled in heat and the vegetables plumped in the garden, Meg’s body grew with the baby. She could feel it turn and kick inside her as though it were swimming in her belly. Castiel made soft beds of moss and seaweed on the rocks for her to lay upon while he ran his hands over her body and lay his head upon the globe of her belly. He was suffused with a buoyancy that Meg had rarely seen before, something new taking root and sprouting within him, growing along with her and the plants of the island. 

She would give him this. She would be strong and bear him a child. Meg wondered if it’s tail would be split or would be whole. If their child would live on the island in the house with her, or move under the waves with Castiel. If their child could move between the worlds of land and sea. She filled her head with hope so her heart would not grow weary with the foreboding that was heavy in her bones. For women have many secrets, and she knew as sure as the cycles of the moon that she would not be a mother. 

When the leaves changed their colors and fell from the trees, the waves on the shore growing colder, the winds more bitter, Meg felt the first pangs in her belly. They grew from day to day, prolonged in time and intensity. Over weeks the pains plagued her but she would not let Castiel know when he came to her. The life within her belly still moved, but it felt as though it thrashed and set her insides whipping up like a tempest. This was not meant to pass. 

The sky was indigo in the pre dawn of a chilly autumn day when she could no longer hold the pain at bay and the first scream ripped from her throat. Meg crawled across the island and down the rocky shore to the edge of the sea where she lay and listened to the waves drowning out her screams. The water of the cruel sea lapped at her feet as she panted and heaved and shook apart with the agony of it. 

When her belly collapsed back on itself and the wet still thing lay between her legs, Meg closed her eyes and wept though she had known for some time, she still mourned the loss of what could not be. 

It was a grotesque thing, their child, still and bloated and deep plum purple. Meg kneeled in the bloody mess from her body, thighs slick with it, hair matted with sweat, and scooped the mangled creature that was hers into her arms. It had the head of a human child and the arms, torso stunted, legs sealed together but there was no fin and no scales. The skin of it’s lower half was mottled dark and broken open over bones. It did not look like it had a single spine as Castiel did, but two stiff legs as Meg had, trapped together, fused and mangled and wrong. It was neither a creature of the land, nor a half breed of the sea, it was a twisted confused thing. 

Meg held it close to her and wailed her sorrow to the waves as she waited. The sky was darkening again when the water broke and Castiel’s head bobbed above the surface. He smiled at her briefly before hearing her cries that still wracked her body now rasping with hours of solitude and mourning. Dipping under the waves he swam closer and dragged himself upon the rocks. 

All day Meg had wondered if she should burn the tiny body and scatter it’s ashes to the wind. If she should give it back to the earth and let it rot. If it was the sea that should claim it, to entomb the thing in it’s depths. Castiel pried the still, cold body from her arms  and there was immeasurable sorrow etched in the lines of his face that was cast down at what he took from her. 

He cupped the back of her neck in one of his hands and pressed their brows together. They breathed together for a pace, Meg finally quieting in his presence as he shared her grief with her. He took the body from her and slipped back in to the waters. 

Meg stood on shaky legs and made her way back up the shore to the lush grass of her island. Her body was hollowed like a shell that could only echo back the sound of a heartbeat. The sea could wash away the blood on the rocks. 

-

Meg was surprised when it was not the rage of the sea to claim her father, but simply old age and a harsh life on the edge of the cliffs. She tended him in his last days as her brother kept vigil with her. His eye sight had faded first, though still he went to the sea and fished. Even when his hands had started to tremble and he could barely work a knot, he was steady enough on a deck to go. When his muscles failed and he became bedridden, that was when his spirit dimmed. When he was denied the sea and the sun. 

His children wept in their grief to see him depart but they knew that all tides will ebb and pull from the shore just as all suns will set over the glimmering water. His body was buried on the fringes of soft earth before it gave way to the rocky cliff behind their house. For a time, Tom remained at home with Meg and they remembered together what a good life he had led. Though their mother had died in childbirth giving Meg to him, and he had never taken another wife after that, their little family of three was content in their house outside of the town. 

Tom returned to his work on the fishing boats when the bright edge of loss had dulled. Meg returned to the gardens and their chickens, to mending clothes and tending the house, to her books and to her domain below the cliffs on the edge of the sea. 

When she found Castiel next, after months had lapsed between them, he wore concern on his face as bare as his skin under the sun. 

“Meg.”

She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her lips to his, trying to banish the unhappiness there.

“I am sorry it has been some time Castiel.”

“Are you all right?”

“I am. My father has passed, he was old and his life was well lived, but …”

Castiel pushed himself up to sitting, folding his black scaled tail underneath him. He pulled her in to his arms and tucked his head over the top of hers, placing a kiss against her hair. 

She leaned in to his embrace, feeling the coldness of his skin warm with her heat and with the sun. The sea was calm today, quietly lapping at the rocky shore. They sat close enough that Meg felt the spray against her legs, soaking her skirts. The smell of salt would follow her home, the comfort of Castiel’s embrace, the quiet understanding. 

Meg pulled back from him, pressing a kiss to his lips and letting her hands linger against his waist. “I have never asked you about your family Castiel.”

“They are gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our kind do not settle in one place for very long. We travel where the fish are plentiful and where we can hide. If we stay too long in one place the two tails find us. I am too young to know of the times when we coexisted, though I have older siblings that remember. But the two tails were greedy and voracious, they hunted our kind. So we move. We follow where the tides take us.”

“And your family has moved on from here?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you not go with them?”

“Because that which I cherish most I cannot take in to the deep with me.”

-

Meg glared at the sky where the clouds were gathering, a strong wind coming off the sea and promising storms later. She would have to leave the rocky shore if it started to rain, for the steep winding path up the cliffside would be too dangerous for her to climb if it were wet. At least the sun shone brightly in the mid morning, the heat of summer making her skirts cling to her legs with sweat. 

Castiel was already waiting for her sprawled on the flat rock where she had first met him. She hopped over boulders and skipped across pebbles to settle down next to him. Digging through her skirts, she handed over the latest crystals which she’d unearthed in the forest. Castiel tipped several more pearls in to her hand, a pretty rose pink one her favorite in the treasure. The necklace she wore was growing longer as the seasons passed. 

His black scales shone and his body rippled with muscle as he heaved on to his side and pushed up, folding his tail beneath him and sitting upright as he affixed her crown atop her head. They rewove the threads and seaweed as needed, building their crowns higher as their treasures accumulated. This was their domain, at the edge of the sea. 

There was a small enclave underneath a rock where Castiel secreted away their crowns and kept them safe. No one knew that he was prince or Meg a princess. It was their secret to keep, like their treasure, like their friendship. 

Meg watched Castiel closer as the seasons passed and she matured. Her necklace of pearls hung over the swell of her breasts, high and firm in her youth. She was a maid of marriageable age by now, but had taken no man for her heart did not belong to them. There were stirrings in her body, a heat under her skin, a longing, when she looked closer at Castiel. Expanses of bared skin, the few pink scars across his torso, the dark shimmering scales thin around his waist that led to his long slender tail. He was a beautiful creature, human or not. 

It was his smile she loved most though, the brightness of blue his eyes that were distinctive even among the waves and the sky. The chime of his laughter and the gentleness of his hands where they cupped her face after he had fixed her crown, lingering. His insatiable curiosity for human stories, and the merkind lore he shared eagerly. 

It was hot under the summer sun and there was a fever under her skin. Meg decided that since Castiel never wore any clothes, she had no reason to either. Stripping off her bodice and chemise, untying the waist of her skirts, Meg set her clothes aside and sat cross legged again on top of the flat rock next to Castiel. 

His wide eyed stare would be amusing if it did not have her tingling with an uncertainty that she had never felt before. 

“I want to feel the sun on my skin too.”

It was a statement. Not quite a dismissal. An invitation perhaps. 

Castiel cocked his head and stared. “Of course.”

He reached a hand out and settled it lightly on top of her knee. “These are so strange.”

Perhaps his curiosity was simply for how different they were. “My knees?”

“Your two tails.”

“These are my legs.”

His smile was there again, reassuring. Uncoiling his tail, shifting it closer, he heaved himself closer to her on the rock. Meg could not hear the waves on the rocks for the pounding in her chest was louder. His hand fanned against her pale thigh, the webbing of his fingers near translucent. 

“May I?”

She did not know for what he asked, nor did she care. Meg simply nodded. 

Grasping her leg, he lifted it in the air, eyes following the line of it as he bent it at the knee and straightened it again. His fingers were cold against her skin, but she knew that it was why he loved the sun so. 

“Your tails are fascinating. They seem too rigid, yet, you are nimble on the rocks.”

Meg laughed, leaning back to rest her palms against the rock. He was merely curious. Somehow, there was still an ache in her belly. Meg rolled her ankle and wiggled her toes at him. Castiel was instantly fascinated. When his fingers traced lightly along the arch of her foot she jerked back. 

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, no that tickles is all. Are my legs that interesting to you?”

“They are strange and beautiful.”

When he bent his head and placed his lips to the smooth skin of her thigh, a whimper shuddered on her parted lips. His hands slipped higher up on the inside of her thigh as he stared between her legs, resting his cheek against her. 

“You are so lovely, I want to know….”

“Yes?”

“May I… may I touch you there as well?”

“Yes.”

As his fingers traced the length of her thigh up to the thatch of curls between her legs then dipped lower and slid against the folds of her sex, it was not only her breath which shuddered but her whole body. 

“Please.”

She did not know what it was she desired from him. Everything. Anything. Though she was a virgin still, Meg knew how animals copulated. She had seen wild animals in the forest, had seen her brother rolling in the field with a town girl. Castiel was however nothing she had ever known before. He was wholly foreign but she was determined to have him. 

He bent at the waist, dropping himself chest down to the rock as he nudged her leg up higher. Crawling in between her parted legs he dragged his cheek over her skin and rubbed his nose at her sex. When he looked up the length of her body there was such fierce hunger in his eyes she feared a minute that she might be consumed. Oh but she would bare herself for it in an instant. 

“It seems odd, that your sex is tucked between your split tails.”

“Where else would it be? Have you ever… with another mermaid?”

“A very long time ago. But I have wanted no other since I have met you, though I knew I had to wait years. I’d wait a lifetime for you.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Will you twine tails with me?”

“I do not have a tail.”

“You have two tails, and are even more special for it.”

“I would give you that, I would give you anything, thought I do not know how.”

“I will take care of you Meg, and I will cherish you more than all the treasure of the sea and the land.”

“Then you may have everything I have to offer.”

Castiel kissed her between her legs, lapped at the flesh of her body growing wet like the shore under the waves. The heat under her skin did not abate but sweltered, body trembling as her breath came short. Castiel caressed his hands over her skin in swirling patterns and licked at her body. Bracing against the rock he pulled himself up along her, his skin sliding over her trembling body, his scales smooth against her legs. 

His crown still sat atop his head nestled among the messy hair that grew lighter as it dried in the sun, curling around his ears. The stones and shells shimmered, his face hovering above hers as he pushed up on his arms to hold himself there. Meg slid her hands along his bare skin, fingers tracing the edge of scales around his waist that she had longed to touch.

They were sleek and smooth, textured like a wave. He rolled his body, tail flexing beneath her and pushing against her hands. Meg gasped to feel something hard and hot sliding along the crease of her leg. She could not see for they were pressed together chest to hip as Castiel lowered himself on to her, laying kisses along her brow and down the line of her nose. She wanted to feel his breath against her mouth, to taste him, to know him. Craning her head up she captured his lips and entreated him. 

Meg shifted as the rippling glide of his dexterous tail began to wrap around a leg. Thighs spread as he lay between her legs unmoving, the soft ruffle of his tail fan tickled against her foot as he wound them together. It was like the harmless snakes she found in her garden that Meg let twine around her arm, undulation of muscle gliding scales over her skin tighter and tighter. 

Clutching at his shoulders, she buried her face in his neck rolled her hips up against him instinctually. With his tail twisted firmly around her leg Castiel shifted atop her, rising on his arms and arching his back, driving down and in to her pliant body. He swept in to her sinuous like a low building wave beginning to crest, bodies sliding together, heat of the sun beating upon them and rising from her core. 

There was an undertow, irresistible and deceptively powerful, that drew her to him. Deeper and darker she slipped under, arms wrapped around his back and the one leg she had free braced on the hard rock as she pulled up to meet him. Her body ached and pulsed with her rapid heartbeat, belly knotted like a salt swollen rope as he pressed into her depth and his back surged driving the motion of his hips. The churning waves inside her finally broke and crashed, lapping through her body as on a shore. She shook apart tossed loose in the chaos of it. 

Castiel’s tail squeezed around her leg, tensing as his whole body did, quivering as he gasped and hid his face against her neck. She clung on to him and mapped the language of his muscle beneath her hands, traced the angles of his face with her lips as he turned in to her. He lay atop her, heavy and languid, tail still twined but moving as though he were stroking her leg with it. 

They lay like that as the waves lulled her and the sun warmed her, until Castiel was stiff with the heat and dry. Though the sun was dipping down low and Meg needed the light to climb back up the steep trail of the cliff, she stretched along the rock and rested her head on the edge where Castiel lay his as he let his lower half soak in the waters. Face to face they lay in the dimming day while the clouds were fringed in pink, touching lips and fingers to each other. The prince and princess of the domain of their own making on the edge of the sea. 

- 

The young maid, though she lived in a house on the cliff outside the edge of the town, still had suitors plenty. She was pretty and youthful, with fair skin and lustrous dark hair that framed a lovely visage. Around her slender neck sat a string of beautiful pearls that many girls envied. She lived happily away from her peers, but it was necessary still to go to town for supplies, to find new books, to wait for her father at the docks when they were to return.

Nothing in the town kept her fancy long enough to stay however. There were no young gentlemen there which she wanted more than the friend she had at the edge of the sea. No one could hold her interest like Castiel did with his stories of sea legends and the history of his kind. She spent every free moment that she could with him.

Meg hoarded the treasures of the deep that Castiel brought to her. The shiny round pearls, the misshapen ones, the few that were pink or gray instead of white. She cherished them all. There were enough to string together and hang about her neck, like she had with the shells she wove in to a crown for him. Meg thought of gathering twine or thread perhaps to wrap around the pearls and string them together but she didn’t want any to come lose or fall away.

Eventually she decided that she should take her secret hoard to her father. A young maid has many secrets, but she knew she could entrust hers to her father. For he was wise and kind, and he would know how to string her pearls together.

She presented him with the little rough cloth pouch that held the treasures gifted to her by Castiel.

“Father. If I want to make a necklace with these, how should I tie them together?”

“Child where have you gotten such treasures? Has a suitor brought you pretty things to woo you?”

“The sea gave them to me.”

Her father looked at her, in that way of his, and clasped his hands rough with work over her treasure.

“Be careful of the sea young lady. She offers many things, but she can be cruel. There is danger in her depths.”

He bent his head and kissed Meg’s forehead in benediction. His warning giving, he smiled again when he stood straight. Her father must understand that maid’s have many secrets.

“Come now, let us find a way to secure these pearls. They will look lovely around your neck.”

-

When their treasures became too many to carry loose in small pouches Meg said that they should craft sometimes of the shells and stones. Castiel was at a loss as for what could be of use from these pretty baubles. But little girls know what to do with pretty things. She wondered if the treasures of the sea could be woven like the flowers in the fields and made into crowns and decorations fit the princess she pretended she was, and for the prince she imagined Castiel to be.

With coarse fibers of old rope, threads from her sewing basket, strips of leather, bits of twine, Meg hoarded and stashed away materials until her father and brother left again on the fishing boats. Their work was somewhat predictable, following the tides and the weather and the schools of fish. Castiel had come to expect her at the edge of the sea according to these schedules, sometimes with months of time stretched between, and he was often waiting for her down below the cliffs.

She gave him her pilfered goods and stated that they would make a crown for him. Treasures spread out on the smooth topped rock they were sprawled on, Meg studied everything they had to figure out how to weave it all together.

Castiel, idly tapping his fingers against the shells and stones asked her, “But what would I need a crown for?”

“A crown is for a prince.”

“I am not a prince.”

“You can be. For a few hours. All you have to do is imagine.”

Picking up threads and shells, Meg started to weave her treasures together.

“Doesn’t a prince need a domain?”

His question made her giggle, “Of course.”

“But what would my domain be if I were a prince?”

“Why the edge of the sea of course. We can share this domain.”

“I would like that.”

Castiel watched her hands working, how they tied and twisted and knotted things up together to form a rope of intertwined bits. He pursed his lips as he concentrated on his task to make a crown as well. Meg was working to make one for him, because she knew what would suit him. She wondered if he made another for himself, or one for her.

They spent the day weaving their crowns, and stories about their domains, as the sun moved across the sky. Castiel placed the crown he worked on atop her head, declaring it fit for the sweetest princess. Meg placed hers on his tangled dark hair and thought the bright colors glimmering in the sunlight suited her prince very well.

“I have something for you Meg.”

Sitting cross legged she leaned towards him. Castiel had secrets too.

“What is it?”

“You bring me treasures from the forests up beyond the cliffs, and I love them so. I have gathered treasures from the deep that the sea does not spit upon the shore.”

“You have?”

From a seaweed braided belt around his waist where he used to carry the pouches of their shared treasures and other things Meg had never bothered to ask about, Castiel plucked a small pouch and upended it. Little round white beads, some elongated, some rippling, spilled in to his hand.

“Pearls!”

He pulled her hand towards him and tipped the treasure in to her palm.

“Castiel they are beautiful. People search for these treasures, they are valued.”

“I know, that is why I have found them for you.”

They were too tiny to weave in to the stately crowns that perched atop their heads, so Meg wrapped them again and tucked them in her skirts pocket for safekeeping. These treasures were special. She would keep them close and find a use suiting to their meaning.

-

Every free day that she had, Meg stole a snatch of time for herself to spend down at the edge of the sea. She and her new friend were building a collection of the finest treasures that the shores had to offer. They had combed and picked over every pocket that gathered sea rubble in the stretch of rocky boulder strewn shore near where she could pick her way down the sloping cliff face. Often the sea had given up new offerings but sometimes the pickings were slim.

Castiel marveled at the glint and glimmer of their treasures in the sun. Though when he spent too much time above the waves his skin dried and his scales creaked, he would haul himself out of the sea and help her find treasure with his slender webbed fingers.

When he was too dried out, he would slip back under the water and rest his arms on a rock, head lain against his forearms, picking idly through what they had collected. Meg wanted to give him more than what the shore had to offer.

She began to bring him rocks and crystals, beautiful things the earth had to offer from the forest and the fields and the shallow stream beds. Offerings of purple and pink, some deep blue, even green and occasionally yellow. She did not have names for these things, but she had books and the company of widows. She gave Castiel these gifts and the knowledge of their names.

Amethyst, quartz, amber, turquoize, agate. He marveled at every crystal she gave him and cradled them carefully in his hands. She brought books down to the shore, that spoke of the lore of the stones. The wise women told her that they could be used for many things. Castiel did not know what a book was, so Meg read to him. He said that her voice was a beautiful thing, an offering more sweet than all the stones she brought him.

When they had run through the books on the stones several times over, memorizing their favorite parts, Meg brought more books to her friend. On legends and myths and practicalities and histories. Everything and anything she could get her hands on in their small town. She lay on the rocks at the edge of the sea and read to him while he bobbed in the waves or sprawled next to her, sharing the sun light.

-

There was a little girl who lived in a house on a cliff above the rocky shores of the sea. Her father and her brother raised her for her mother had been given back to the earth. They lived on the outskirts of a small fishing town and her father was one of many men who lived both on the land and on the sea. Her brother too, when she was old enough to mind herself, would sail out with her father to chase the fish.

The little girl did not mind when she was left to tend the chickens and the gardens. It meant days of unbridled freedom running away from the old widows that came up from town to check on her. Days running through the forests and racing with the stream. Days reading under the sun and weaving flowers into crowns so that she might declare herself queen of the field mice.

Her father always told her that the shores below the cliffs were too dangerous a place for little girls. But she was a careful girl. And patient. Between the weeks she was left alone and the times her brother and father came back, she conducted her stealthy mission. To find her own path to the sea. To find her own secret way.

Seasons passed as she roamed up and down the fields of the cliff top, far away from home and back again. There were many paths she saw and tested that did not weave down all the way to the shore. But she was a persistent girl. She found her way.

A steep switchback trail of skittery rocks and tip toe ledges wove it’s way down to the sea. The shore was all rocks massive and rough. She figured anything pounded by the sea so mercilessly would be rough. But there were treasures there. Bits of beautiful shell and smooth worn stone shining in the crags of rocks and the few sparse patches of flat sand or stretches of pebble.

It was the girl’s secret. Every time that her father and brother left to chase the fish, she found her way to her trail and explored the sea shore, gathering pretty things.

The girl was always alone down there. It wasn’t the sort of place that people went. It wasn’t the nice soft sand sort of beaches to the north that the seals rolled on. It was hers and hers alone. Until one day it wasn’t.

She had her skirts half lifted to make a pouch to stash her treasures as she crouched beside a boulder and picked through the sea’s rubble. There was a great splash on the other side of the rocks, the sound of something moving about. The girl was frightened for a moment. But perhaps it was another like her that had come to explore.

Scrabbling back over smaller stones and up to the top of the boulder the girl squinted against the bright noon sunlight and saw what had made that commotion. A creature lay sprawled on a flat boulder not close enough to touch but not far. A curious thing. Half man and half fish. Like the creatures of legend. The mermen. Old gray bearded men who were bitter with life spoke of these sea creatures with fear and hatred in their voice. The little girl knew these men were not wise. Not like the books she read full of fantastical tales of the creatures of the sea.

The creature spotted her. It rolled on to it’s back as it flapped it’s tail in the sea off the edge of the rock, hands stretching up above it’s head. It’s eyes went wide and it’s mouth fell open when it saw her.

She crouched on the rock and scooted closer. “Do not be afraid. I am just a little girl, not a mean old man. I won’t hurt you.”

The creature sat up, brushing back the shaggy dark hair that fell around it’s face. It’s chest was flat so the girl supposed that he was a boy of his kind. For he was too large to be a young child like her, undeveloped. His tail whipped uncertainly in the waves that lapped against the rock.

She sat on the edge of the rock, her treasures wrapped in her skirt in her lap. “Little girls are good at keeping secrets. I promise I won’t tell anyone. What are you doing up here, out of the deep?”

The creature tipped forward and crawled with his hands a little closer. He opened his mouth a few times, and she waited patiently. When he let out a noise it was a harsh scrape of sound. Too guttural for speech. She was patient though, and waited. He tried again, and again, before his scratchy rasp of a voice formed words that she could only guess he hadn’t used in some time.

“I like to come up and warm myself in the sun.”

She smiled. Hopping off her boulder to a rock beneath, she clambered up on to the one he lay across. “It is a nice day out for that. I come down here to collect treasures.”

“Treasures?”

The girl unfolded her skirts and showed her treasures to him. She plucked a pink shell that was whole and smooth and shining in the sun. A rare treasure indeed. She extended her hand to give to him. “Here. A fine treasure to start your collection.”

The creature took the shell and he smiled. His skin was so pale but she supposed he did not see the sun much if he lived in the deep. There were gills on the side of his neck like a fish although his upper body resembled mostly a man. As he turned the shell over and studied it she saw webs between his fingers. The long black fish tail shimmered with bright iridescence that was entrancing in the sun.

He clutched the shell in his hand. “Thank you.”

“The sea spits out these things, don’t you have them in the deep? They must come from somewhere.”

“We do. They are common things. Not treasure.”

“Oh.”

“But they are more lovely in the light of the sun.”

He held the shell up to the sky and turned in about, light glinting off the shimmer of it.

“Do you have a name creature?”

He blinked at her, eyes the color of the sky on a clear windless day or the crests of waves in the shallows. “Castiel.”

“My name is Meg.”

One needs a name for a friend after all.

“These rocks are dangerous and the tides are treacherous, I’m not sure if it is safe down here for you Meg.”

“But my eyes are keen and my feet are sure. Do not worry for me.”

Meg shook out her skirts and spread her treasure on the rock. They sat together at the edge of the sea and Meg marveled that the sun had never felt quite so warm before.


End file.
